'Or maybe it was the ghost of the witch. Anyway, after that they tried it out by having a blackening. My uncle slept that night with the ashes on him and he didn't have any dreams, so they decided the Hand Trembler was right. The ghost couldn't find him with those ashes on him. So the next night they got together again there in our hogan and decided they ought to find a Singer who knew the Enemy Way.'
Billy Nez paused again.
'And my cousin told them he would find the Wolf and carry the scalp,' the younger boy said.
'My grandfather didn't want me to do it. He said it was supposed to be an older man who got the scalp. Somebody who'd had an Enemy Way sung over him. But finally they said I could do it.'
'You know the Tracking Bear Song?' Leaphorn asked.
'My grandfather taught me that,' Billy Nez said. He laid his cigarette on the ground and chanted softly:
'In shoes of dark flint I track the Ute warrior,
In armor of flint I slay the Ute enemy.
With Big Snake Man I go, tracking the warrior.
I usually slay the Ute men and slay the Ute women.
Tracking Bear I go, taking Ute scalps.'
Billy Nez stopped, suddenly embarrassed, and recovered his cigarette.
The three sat in silence a long moment. The chanting had started at the fire again, another sway dance. This time the song was old, a pattern of rhythmic monosyllables which had lost coherent meaning somewhere in time.
'How did you know where to look for the scalp?' Leaphorn asked.
That had taken time, Billy Nez said. His uncle had drawn for him the way the tracks of that truck had looked.
'Like this,' Billy Nez said. He smoothed the bare earth with his palm and opened his pocket knife.
'The front tires had a track like this.' He drew the tread pattern in the earth. 'And the outside of the track, it wasn't as deep. Like he needed a front end job on his truck. Tires wearing on the outside. And the back tires were like this.' He drew the pattern of high-traction mud treads. 'Cut real deep. I thought I could find them.'
'And I guess you did,' Leaphorn said.
It had taken Billy Nez almost a week. Three hard days on a horse before he had picked up the first of the tracks-old ones, already almost erased by the wind. On the fourth day, he had caught a glimpse of the Land-Rover. He had been on Talking Rock Mesa and had seen it moving down a wash into the Kam Bimghi Valley. After sunrise the next day he found where the witch was working-clearing a track for his truck up the sloping backside of Ceniza Mesa. And, later that day, he had made his scalp coup.
'I left my horse hobbled up there on top,' Billy Nez said, 'and I hid out there in the rocks, down near where he was working. He was rolling those rocks out of the way and cutting brush to clear the track. Finally he stopped a while and sat down under a pinon there and ate some stuff and some canned peaches and threw away the can. I thought maybe I'd get that can he'd ate out of for the scalp but that wouldn't be very good and so later on I got the hat.'
'Tell how you got it,' the younger cousin urged.
'Well, along later in the afternoon the clouds built up the way they do and it got shady and the wind got up. He was wrestling with those rocks and his hat kept blowing off. So the next time he moved that truck farther up the slope, he left that hat there on the seat of the truck. When he was working again, I slipped up there and got it.'
'And took off the hatband and left it behind,' Leaphorn said.
Billy Nez looked surprised. 'Yeh. It was silver conchos.'
'There was a rifle there in the truck,' younger cousin said.
'Think it was a Remington,' Billy Nez said. 'Had a long barrel and a telescopic sight. Looked like a .30-06 deer rifle.'
'Anything else in there?' Leaphorn asked.
'There was a map folded up there over the dashboard. I think it was a map. And a paper sack on the seat. Maybe part of his lunch. And there was a set of pulleys in the back.' The boy paused, thinking.
'A block-and-tackle?' Leaphorn suggested.
'Yes,' Nez said.
'Anything else?'
'No. I didn't look much. Just got that hat and then I thought I didn't want to steal that concho band so I took it off. Tied a yucca thong to that hat and tied it on the scalp stick like my grandfather said to do with the scalp-that's so you aren't handling it with your hands so much. And then when I got back up on the mesa away from there, I sang the Tracking Bear Song and used pollen and rode on back to the hogan.'
Leaphorn gave the boys each a third cigarette.
'And now,' he said, 'I want you to tell me about your brother. I want you to tell about Luis Horseman.' He tried to read Billy Nez's face. Was it surprise, or fear, or anger? The boy looked at the tip of the cigarette, and then took a long drag and blew out the smoke.
'I heard Law and Order already found him,' Billy Nez said. 'I heard Luis Horseman is dead.'
'We found his body,' Leaphorn said. 'He was way down by Ganado when we found him, a hundred miles south of here. We don't know how he got there.'
